For Suozzi, looking ahead may have hurt him
Photo credit: Danielle Finkelstein | Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi debates other candidates at Hofstra University. (Oct. 27, 2009)
Suozzi comments on delayed polling results
Edward Mangano photos
Thomas Suozzi through the years
2009 Long Island elections
Leave it to Tom Suozzi to look to the comeback before the full extent of the setback is even known.
"If I end up losing this race," wrote the two-term county executive in an opinion piece last Sunday, "it may send a message that dramatic action must be taken and other elected officials must sign on to the work I have done largely alone over the years to fight for property tax relief."
Largely alone. Sounds like martyrdom-as-sales-pitch.
His last electoral rebuke came in 2006 when he flopped badly for governor against Eliot Spitzer. He penitently played the loyal Democrat. But then Spitzer imploded, which made Suozzi seem more prophetic than pathetic.
This time, with the jury still out on his day job, Suozzi has readied his appeal. Voters were and are angry - for reasons other than himself, namely school taxes. His Democrats didn't come out, the Republicans did.
Surely Suozzi has some reason to blame bigger trends. If Republican Edward Mangano prevails when the counting is done, he will have won on the shoulders of less than one in seven registered county voters, part of a wider regional story.
But Suozzi's continual musings since 2005 on the next gig - running for governor, eyeing the U.S. Senate, talking about lieutenant governor - had to invite indifference to his re-election from some of those he counted on to show up and pull the lever for him.
>>VIDEO: Click here to watch Suozzi comment on delayed polling results
"People don't like it when you're asking them for their vote this year and you've got one foot out the door," said a well-known consultant who declined to be identified.
"He got ahead of himself," added a Democratic insider who must live in the same circles. "Once people think you regard yourself as too big for them, they kill you."
Other questions were Suozzi-specific, too. Was the $30-million-plus home-energy tax, a rallying cry for Mangano, the only option? Did Suozzi bother to patiently work the home precincts, visit the community gatherings? If Mangano's family business tax issues really reflected on his fitness for the office, should Suozzi have cited it himself in his two debates and not left it to surrogates to go negative?
Post-election, Suozzi called for the centralization of school control in the county executive's office. If the executive is to be blamed for school taxes, he argued, the executive should be able to say how they are spent, and the voters can hold him accountable.
Economies of scale for operating expenses have long been considered. But Suozzi's argument became a little misleading.
"Let's take a lesson from New York City," Suozzi wrote. "After Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg was given full mayoral control, quality improved."
Whoa, just a moment. Weren't we talking about restraining costs?
Any measurable improvements in New York City did not come with cost cuts. Quite the opposite - in tandem with winning school control, Bloomberg oversaw a sharp rise in education spending. Classroom staff increased. Teachers got big contract boosts. Property taxes increased, too.
If Republican Mangano - by all accounts a congenial sort - becomes county executive, he will have a legislature and probably a comptroller of the same party, the same deal as Suozzi. Then the hard choices about chronic gaps in revenues and spending will fall to his team.
The hot seat would be all his own. Given how tough the job will be for either side, the victors may one day come to envy the defeated. But certainly not yet.
For Suozzi, the habit of looking ahead, which is ordinarily an advantage, might have hurt him - if it meant getting ahead of himself.
>> PHOTOS: View photos of Tom Suozzi through the years
>> PHOTOS: View photos of Ed Mangano's 2009 race
